Image by Francis van Helmont.
by Sophia Blaeser
Charles Baudelaire’s The Modern Public and Photography is an insightful essay that critiques the role of photography in shaping culture and explores the nuanced relationship shared by audience and artist. Although Baudelaire’s concern for the preservation of imagination in art is respectable, his romanticized vision of the merit of pre-industrial painting is overly simplistic, and his concerns about photography’s impact on creative expression are unjustified. While many of Baudelaire’s ideas are anachronistic and perhaps easily disputed in our context, what remains of what he has to say about the role of the artist is still remarkably relevant today, even in such a different market than the one he was familiar with in 1850s France.
Baudelaire is afraid of the impacts of photography in the modern art world, believing that a taste for the imaginary will vanish, and art will only be valued for its “exact reproduction of nature” (295). He, in part, criticizes industrialization for this effect, supposing that in a time when efficiency and mechanical reproduction are appraised above all, only replicas of reality will be admired. Indeed, Baudelaire “[is] convinced that the badly applied advances of photography, like all purely material progress for that matter, have greatly contributed to the impoverishment of French artistic genius” (Baudelaire 296). Considering how Baudelaire values creative, imaginative art, his grievance with the decline of the ‘French artistic genius’ suggests that he trusts that in the era that preceded photography, France was a country that promoted a wide array of creative expression, which only began to diminish in the wake of industrialization. Yet Baudelaire could not be more wrong about this, because at the time of his writing, and the two hundred years before, exceptionally conservative standards modelled by the Salon de Paris dominated the French art world.
Established in 1667, the Salon began as an exhibition sponsored by Louis XIV to showcase the works of members of the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture. The
Académie itself was a sort of government agency paid for by the king, and because of this, the Salon “was a direct expression of the monarchy” that upheld aristocratic taste and, in its massive influence, “assigned an effective monopoly to the academicians on the primary market for major commissions” (Etro, Federico et al. 6). The Salon had a hierarchy for subject matter where:
The best and most important works were history paintings—large-format works primarily showing episodes from ancient history or the Bible. Portraiture was considered the second most accomplished form of painting, followed by genre paintings depicting everyday life, and landscape painting. Still life occupied the lowest rung. This hierarchy of genres was reinforced by the École des beaux-arts, the state-sponsored school of fine arts primarily responsible for educating aspiring artists in France. (Greenwald 56)
This hierarchy reveals how art was ranked based on strict conventions, where technique was touted as more important than originality or any kind of dialogue with the viewer, and paintings were restricted to depicting literal scenes rather than conveying feeling or emotional experience. Additionally, “while other genres and styles could be traded in the art market, demand was virtually confined to the painters who were accepted at the Salon, and the willingness to pay for the artists who were not exhibited there was much lower” (Etro, Federico et al. 2). Even after the revolution, this tradition continued, and “bias in favor of a closed and exclusive ‘aristocracy of art’ and against a more commercial and inclusive role of the Salon as an open marketplace […] was never overturned until the final collapse of the Salon in the 1880s” (Etro, Federico et al. 57). So, while it makes sense that Baudelaire may have romanticized art of the past as more imaginative (as the Salon prioritized reproductions of biblical and mythological scenes instead of representational art), it did not furnish any diversity beyond the taste of the nobility, and it certainly did not allow “the artist [to] paint only in accordance with what he sees and feels [and be] faithful to his own nature” (Baudelaire 298).
Nevertheless, Baudelaire was right in his observation of the rising popularity of representational art, though his fear that it will completely dominate the imaginary and “the painter [will become] more and more inclined to paint, not what he dreams, but what he sees” (Baudelaire 297) is unfounded. While representational art did become more mainstream as a symptom of industrialization, this was not due solely to the advent of photography but rather a combination of factors. More importantly, an increase in representational art was not the crushing blow to creativity that Baudelaire thought it was, but instead its prerequisite. In Painting by Numbers: Data-Driven Histories of Nineteenth-Century Art, Greenwald observes a rise in representational imagery of peasants starting in the 1830s, in part because of the new freedom of movement allowed by railway between country and city, but also because
As the city grew ever larger, as its slums, its spectacular building campaigns, and its social upheaval became more prominent in France of the Second Empire, there was quite literally a need to bring landscape into the city. It entered quite directly in the growing number of landscapes, animal pictures and paintings of rural genre. These forms of painting constitute an urban phenomenon . . . Millet himself certainly found a measure of tranquility in the country around Barbizon, and he shared nostalgia for an untrammeled past. (54)
In a rapidly changing world, a longing for familiar or ideal images of the past emerged; a new craving for this kind of representational art arose. Indeed, “Under the July Monarchy, liberalizing changes were made to the makeup of the Salon jury, [whose] changes favored landscape and genre painters” (Greenwald 57), and many artists awarded with prizes from the salon around that time were neither educated at nor members of the École des beaux-arts (the principal Académie that featured in the exhibition). These conditions signal a democratization of art symptomatic of the newly emerging middle class.
With the rush of a booming capitalist economy, industry expanded, and a fresh market of buyers had disposable incomes to spend. The diversity of this clientele led to a demand for a range of subject matter from the traditional to the radical. While before, the artist had to consider the gentile customer, now he had the freedom to portray subjects that, formerly, were foreign and thus unappreciated by his commissioner. As evidenced by the rising popularity of realism, regular people had little interest in archaic portrayals of gods, heroes, and history. Instead, they desired art that reflected modern tendencies and values distinct from the world of aristocracy that they did not relate to. Therefore, it wasn’t the invention of photography, as Baudelaire puts it, that led to “society [rushing], like Narcissus, to contemplate its trivial image” (Baudelaire 295), but industrialization as a whole. Moreover, contrary to Baudelaire’s belief, this desire to see oneself reflected in art was nothing new. Art captures the essence of a community’s beliefs, traditions, and experiences and often establishes ideals modelled by the dominant class (for example, Greek art and literature celebrated social norms and expectations around honour, bravery, and loyalty exemplified by its warriors and rulers). The Rococo period that lasted from roughly the 1700s to the mid-1780s in France reflected the luxurious lifestyles of the aristocracy, producing works that emphasized themes of leisure, love, and nature, catering to tastes of opulence and wealth. Really, it is only that standards of art shifted as values and the demographic of buyers did. Thus, photography’s ability to encourage society’s “glorious opportunity for its own satisfaction” (Baudelaire 296) is not a consequence of modernity but a permanent feature of humanity that both nobility and the middle-class alike share.
Realism and photography, with their honest depictions of reality, did not eradicate a taste for the imaginary, as Baudelaire thought they would, but instead (ironically) championed the same values that made its role in art so popular in the latter half of the 19th century and onwards. Realism was the first art movement to go against Academic norms, although in a subtle way, because of its portrayal of everyday subjects and experience. The Impressionist period, which is estimated to have begun in France in 1860, only a year after the publication of Baudelaire’s essay, was equally a countermovement dedicated to representing the human experience. This radical style, like realism, illustrated relatable scenes whose beauty and familiarity were attractive to bourgeois customers. Where impressionism diverges from realism, however, is in style. Impressionism was one of the earliest movements to shift toward a more creative and less literal representation of reality, with a focus on depicting the sensation of a moment or place rather than what was objectively true. These paintings reflected the artist’s subjective view of a scene, which Baudelaire would have endorsed, seeing as he believes that the true artist should use his imagination to “[decompose] all creation, and, with the […] rules whose origins can be found only in the deepest recesses of the soul, [create] a new world” (Baudelaire 299). Because of their distinct style, Impressionist paintings were considered poorly painted, and conservative critics rejected their admission to the Salon exhibits. Nonetheless, these paintings were often still adored by the public because clients could easily identify with them.
Photography may have also contributed to the popularization of the Impressionist movement, which Baudelaire would not have predicted, seeing as he thought that “it is simple common-sense that, when industry erupts into the sphere of art, it becomes the latter’s mortal enemy” (Baudelaire 296). Instead of convincing the public that “art is, and can only be, [an] exact reproduction of nature” (295), photography revolutionized the role of art. Now, instead of being a medium used to record history, (a job that was supplanted by the camera), art transformed into a mode of expression and a translator of imagination. This trend would only become more evident in the 20th century, as more abstract art movements emerged.
The 1900s brought about an era of revolution in Western understanding, with events such as the First World War destabilizing previously unquestioned values, which radically changed modern life and attitudes. Notions previously thought of as objective, like religion, crumbled, and overall judgments of ‘truth’ were brought into question. Abstract movements like Dadaism reflected this by rejecting traditional artistic values and turning away from logic and empiricism—which, in art, meant any sort of comprehensible representation of reality. Now, instead of being a radical take, it is common opinion that art is subjective. Certainly, this acceptance is a good thing because it invites freedom and diversity, leading to more imaginative works, which embrace empathy. As John Berger says in his essay “Ways of Seeing”, “The more imaginative the work, the more profoundly it allows us to share the artist’s experience of the visible” (9). While many of Baudelaire’s criticisms pertaining to the 19th and 20th century may have been misguided, as outlined in the paragraphs above, some of his arguments are more relevant than ever when it comes to the modern art world of today.
Baudelaire scorns the artist’s habit of “creating an impact of surprise” (Baudelaire 293) by means of ridiculous titles or attention-grabbing subjects that “attempt to provoke astonishment by means that are foreign to the art” (Baudelaire 292). He declares that this phenomenon occurs because:
The French public, which, in the manner of mean little souls, is singularly incapable of feeling the joy of dreaming or of admiration, wants to have the thrill of surprise by means that are alien to art, and its obedient artists bow to the public’s taste; they aim to draw its attention, its surprise, stupefy it, by unworthy stratagems, because they know the public is incapable of deriving ecstasy from the natural means of true art. (Baudelaire 294)
In this passage, Baudelaire is criticizing the general public’s disinclination for meditation on a subject. They want art to reflect nature so that it may be easy to understand, yet simultaneously they crave excitement, which is an incompatible combination. In the current art market grounded in subjectivity, Baudelaire’s scrutiny of sensationalism feels undeniably pertinent. Again, while capitalism has allowed for more freedom of diversity in art (an arguably good thing), it is hard for artists to survive on their craft alone since, instead of being able to rely on and appeal to a hegemonic taste, they must simply hope that what they create somehow speaks to enough people. Thus, to make money, many artists must turn to methods of capturing the public’s attention by “means that are alien to art” (Baudelaire 294). Modern art is often ridiculed as meaningless, stupid, and downright bad, but controversial works such as Comedian by Maurizio Cattelan, better known as ‘the banana that was taped to a wall and sold for six million dollars,’ and Take the Money and Run by Jens Haaning do their job. They draw people in. In a time when short-form content on social media platforms has made attention more and more scarce, and synopsis is valued over long-form dialogue, it is expected that people have less of a desire to meditate on art. This unfortunately diminishes one of the chief powers of art, which, as mentioned in the conclusion of the previous paragraph, is to incite empathy. A lack of attention leads to a lack of commitment to art, since commitment entails study and time. Study leads to knowledge, knowledge to understanding, and understanding to empathy. While art did become more and more imaginative, like Baudelaire wanted, our desire to authentically connect with it has not, and it may be debated that that legacy of gimmicky, gaudy titles has only just evolved to live on in the form of shocking images and controversial statements.
Still, attempting to reintroduce some kind of aristocratic concept of objective taste is not a solution. Not only is it unrealistic, but it is wrong, because it undermines individuality and promotes the notion that one class of values is superior to others. Equally, it is not the intention of this essay to blame the audience or abstract art for this problem; actually, that cannot be further from the truth. Artists are manipulated by the market to create something that sells. Instead, it is important to explore what Baudelaire meant when discussing the helpful anecdote “Nature is but a dictionary” (Baudelaire 303). He explains that, like the words that compose a language, nature provides us with necessary tools, like forms and sensation, that we use as reference, but nature itself doesn’t create poetry or a painting. He says, “Painters who obey imagination consult their dictionaries in search of elements that fit in with their conceptions; and even then, in arranging them with artistry, they give them a wholly new appearance” (Baudelaire 304). Artists must utilize reality (that is, culture and the current moment) as context in order to effectively communicate with their audience so that the function of what they are trying to express is congruent within the logic of its own world and can be decoded by the viewer. As a juvenile example, a drawing done in the style of a child would be out of place in a painting purely about, say, economics, but it would be faithful in a depiction of nostalgia. As Baudelaire expresses, “All the figures, their grouping in relation to each other, the landscape or interior that provides their background or horizon, their clothes, everything, in short, must serve to shed light on the generating idea, and wear its original colour – its livery, so to speak” (Baudelaire 304). In turn, the viewer must equally take the time to dissect, analyze, and admire “so that the language of dreams may be very clearly translated” (Baudelaire 304).
John Singer Sargent was considered one of the greatest portrait painters of the 19th century due to his soulful, empathetic representation of his subjects. He would vigorously study his sitter for months before beginning a draft. His philosophy was that an artist must “cultivate an ever-continuous power of observation. Wherever you are, be always ready to make slight notes of postures, groups and incidents. Store up in the mind… a continuous stream of observations from which to make selections later. Above all things get abroad, see the sunlight and everything that is to be seen” (“Writings). The thoughtful way Sargent painted the unique posture of a man’s back, the shine in a woman’s eye, and the glow of someone’s skin conveys the essence of a person and embodies his distinct way of seeing. To him, art is born of communication and formulated through empathy. It is a sophisticated language, and it requires intention. When artists try and capture an audience solely through theatrics without substance, they are neglecting the beauty of dialogue, of communication, and of abstract articulation in favour of being different and individual.
Art is not entirely about individuality in the sense that it is meant to just be an expression of the self. Art is symbiotic; it is connection. “[Artist and audience] form two co-relative terms, which act upon one another with equal force” (Baudelaire 294). It is about saying things that cannot be expressed in words and reflecting on and forming culture. Even in today’s art world, where attention is fragmented and sensationalism can often overshadow substance, Baudelaire’s call for thoughtful engagement with art still resonates. Art is a language, and you need to make the sentences you say make sense within the context of what you are expressing. Whether that is portrayed in the abstract meaning of the work or through the stroke of a brush on canvas depends on what you are trying to say and how you say it.
Works Cited
Baudelaire, Charles. “The Salon of 1859.” Selecting Writings on Art and Artists, Cambridge University Press, 1972, pp. 291–307.
Berger, John. Ways of Seeing, Based on the BBC Television Series with John Berger. British Broadcasting Corporation: Penguin Books, 2008.
Etro, Federico, et al. Liberalizing Art Evidence on the Impressionists at the End of the Paris Salon. University of Milano – Bicocca, 2018.
Greenwald, Diana. Painting by Numbers Data-Driven Histories of Nineteenth-Century Art. Princeton University Press, 2021, pp. 52–84.
Paige-Lovingood, Mandy. “Royal Spectacles and Social Networks: Early 18th-Century Salon Exhibition Practices.” Displaying Art in the Early Modern Period, Routledge, 2023, pp. 54–70.
“Writings of John Sargent.” The Writings of John Singer Sargent, www.artgraphica.net/free-art-lessons/john-singer-sargent/writings-of-john-singer-sargent.html. Accessed 16 April. 2025.